Ready for Woodford

That's it for the year as far as classes go folks.  We're all practiced up ready for the ceili at Woodford Folk Festival.  Come along and dance to our tunes in the Dance Hall on Monday 29th December at 9.00pm.

 

Classes will resume on 4th February as many of us will be away during January.  In the meantime those remaining in the area are still likely to be playing in the usual sessions at Finbar's and wherever else Celtic tunes may be found.  Finbar's sessions start around 5.00pm every Sunday, and intermediate sessions on 1st and 3rd Sundays of each month from 2.00pm to 4.00pm.

 

Have a great festive season everybody!

New class format and preparing for Woodford

Last week we changed the format of the Wednesday evening classes and practice. The session now starts at 6:15pm with teaching done at a slower rate, more suitable for players new to Irish music. At about 7:00pm the pace picks up for the more seasoned players. This change appears popular so we'll continue doing it this way.

Maleny Ceili Band will be playing for a ceili at Woodford Folk Festival again this year, on Monday 29th December at 9:00pm. For the next few weeks we'll be concentrating on practicing our sets, many new ones but some of the old favourites still included.

Tune learning, ceili set practice, and session playing have all been continuing as usual, although several members, including the editor of this blog, have been away at various times.  Perhaps not surprisingly the majority visited Ireland to experience the music at it's origins.

The experiment of learning at higher speed has been successful but we are aware that this method is not practical for newer players.  In the near future we will trial starting the Wednesday evening class half an hour earlier, teaching at a slower pace for the early part of the evening then picking up speed later.  We'll let you know when this begins.

The next major event on our calendar is the Woodford Folk Festival where once again the Maleny Ceili Band will play for a fun-for-all dance.

After a few busy weeks including the Maleny Music Weekend and Neurum Creek Music Festival the tunes class is relaxing back to our routine.  Last week we concentrated on some tunes that we learned a while back but hadn't been playing.  This week we learned a new reel, The Tap Room, then continued with revision.  It's good to see a few new faces around the place, and the return of some who haven't been for a while.

At the Winter School a couple of tutors taught new tunes by playing them over and over at varying speeds until everybody had picked them up.  Last week Steve trialled that method when teaching two hornpipes, Hills of Tara and Glenbeigh.  It worked quite well for us.

This week we found it wasn't so easy with the reel being taught so broke the tune into phrases of about four bars each.  This worked efficiently and we now have The Belfast Traveller mastered.  (well, perhaps a little more practice needed. :)  )

Those currently attending the classes have been at it for a year or two now and are comfortable with the pace.  However don't be put off if you are a beginner and want to come along.  We are more than happy to provide more individual tutoring at a slower speed.  Just let us know.

Thanks to Steve we now have another fine reel in our collection - The Killavil Fancy. 

The ceili sets for this coming Saturday's fun at the Maleny Community Centre are practiced and rocking along.  We can't wait, it's going to be a brilliant weekend!

Last night Steve taught us the jig Old Tipperary - nice one Steve, thank you.

We also ran through a few of our sets for the Winter School ceili.  Rather than try to get new sets up to speed we plan to use the Caloundra sets from a few weeks ago, revisit some of our older sets, and also the Australian sets of Cath's tunes.  There are only two more Wednesdays before the Winter School so if you wish to play it would be good if you can come along to them.